The Squamidian Report – Feb. 8 / 14
Issue #611
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
I keep asking if you 'remember' stuff, when referring to something I've
written about in the past. It's good for your brain to remember things
so I'm actually doing all of you a favour. Brain training is important
for all of us old farts, not matter what our ages. So, this week's 'do
you remember' quiz is, do you remember when I mentioned my Super Club
R/C airplane has control issues when flying in cold conditions and that
I'd traced the problem to my radio control unit. The issue was loss of
rudder control which is quite problematic when flying anything
including R/C airplanes. Well, I paired that old controller, a DX4e, to
my SR 120 helicopter to see what would happen and also because it was
originally a better quality controller quality wise than the one that
came with the heli. Flying the SR 120 indoors proved to be makably
smoother. Flying the heli outdoors was also better and easier as long
as it was fairly warm out. However, one morning this past week it was
clear and cold and very calm outside so I decided to take the heli out
for a fly. It takes a few minutes to get an R/C unit up and running,
you must first power up the controller, then power up the R/C unit and
then give them a minute to talk to each other and do whatever else the
onboard electronics do. That few minutes was all it took to chill the
internal electronics of the DX4e controller. I could not get the heli
to take off. I kept crashing before it even lifted off the deck floor.
The one time I did get it into the air it took off sideways and
backward. I thought perhaps that what none-existent wind there was, was
causing some strange turbulence effects on the deck so I took the heli
out front onto the driveway. Same thing, I could not take off without
careening in some unexpected direction and into a crash. So, I brought
it into the house and still could not take off, but after a few
minutes, everything was normal and I could fly just fine again. What I
did notice when trying to figure out what was wrong was that aileron
input was causing the unit to yaw (rotate left or right), and yaw input
was causing the unit to dip sideways, the inputs were acting reversed.
What you need to understand but probably don't really care about is
that with a single rotor helicopter, the rotor drive spins the rotor
clockwise. The equal and opposite reaction from that torque wants to
spin the body of the heli counterclockwise. This in turn is countered
by the vertical tail rotor which pushed against the counter rotating
body. The correct amount of lateral thrust halts the rotation but
shoves the whole unit to the left, quite quickly if not arrested. How
do you 'arrest' that left drift you ask... with right aileron which on
a heli dips the main rotors to the right and causes a right drift which
is hopefully equal and opposite to the left thrust induced drift. All
this must be balanced at takeoff or the unit goes careening out of
control all over the place. Now, when the controller starts sending out
unexpected mixed up signals to the R/C, it just gets weird.
Normal input on a control unit is called Mode 2 and is standard for
North America. There are other modes, 1, 3, and 4. On Mode 4
controllers, yaw and aileron input is switched. It would appear
that the effect of cold on that controller is to cause the controller
to mimic Mode 4, perhaps from age deterioration, or electronic
deterioration, or whatever. Basically that old DX4e is showing it's age
and creates some interesting and unwanted control issues when it gets
cold. So, until I can replace it, I'll have to limit using it to either
indoor flying or when its above about +12 or so outside. Not a problem
now that I'm aware of the temperature limitations and it certainly
explains some of the control issues I've complained about in the past,
and yes, I've now verified what I wrote about before, the controller
has seen better days. I guess it just sat unused for too long.
There is an easy and practical solution that I'll get around to in the
near future. I'll simply replace that old unit with a new, more
advanced unit. The DX6i is the 'big brother' of my old one and has some
very useful features including the ability to have up to 10 R/C units
bonded to it at the same time. My old controller, and the small
controllers that came with each of my units will only bind to ONE UNIT
AT A TIME. They will bind to other units, but must be re-bound whenever
you switch from one R/C to another. The DX6i can remember the binding
for all my R/C's plus several more, and each unit can have custom
inputs and responses programed into the controller. And of course, the
DX6i being a higher quality controller, has smoother more precise input
response, and, my hands need only be familiar with the tactile feel of
one controller instead of adjusting back and forth between multiple
controllers. Obviously, any controller can only control one R/C unit at
a time. One more tidbit of information... the '4' in the old controller
name refers to the number of channels available, ie, throttle, rudder,
aileron and elevator. The '6' in the name of the unit I would upgrade
to refers to 6 available channels. The extra 2 channels can be utilized
for things like flap, landing gear, or any other gizmo that can be
manipulated by a servo motor or signal pulse. So, I hope you were
paying attention because there will be a memory testing quiz in an
upcoming issue.
*
The filming industry is very big and very busy on the
west coast. There are major studios in and throughout the Lower
Mainland. There is also a lot of on-site filming activity throughout
the Sea to Sky corridor, specifically at Furry Creek, Britannia and
right here in Squamish. There have been quite a few movies and TV shows
shot in our little down town and on our waterfront. This week a film
crew set up camp right here on our street and around the corner onto
Thunderbird. A house just around the corner is being used as a set
location. It is incredible how much equipment and how many people are
needed to get the shots they are after. They have trucks full of every
conceivable thing they might need, and big electrical generators to
supply the power for the arrays of illumination lighting. Can't depend
on that bright old sun to produce proper daylight I guess. They also
have two food trucks and two food tents set up along the street. That
would not make any sense to me at all if it weren't for the fact that I
have several friends who work in the Vancouver film industry. They
experience this on a regular basis. One food tent is for the lowly
lackeys, the grunts, the 'extras' and so on. The other tent is for the
important people, the main actors, directors, upper staff, top makeup
artists and so on.
Where it gets funny is that while a 'low level' person is not permitted
in the 'important' tent on their own, they are permitted in if they are
with an important person, no questions asked at all. My one friend is a
'low lever' stand-by, extra type actor and therefor normally must use
the grunt food tent. My other friend is a high level makeup artist as
well as special effects artist and had done some fairly high level
acting in several shows and knows many big name actors personally. She
of course uses the important people food tent. When they are on the
same set together, my 'low level' friend is automatically upgraded to
the important tent because he is associated with her, but if shes not
there, he is automatically downgraded back to the grunt food tent.
Funny world we live in.
doug
****
The Farm, Kyra Style
Although it was cold this week, Lauren, Ryan and Kyra joined Doug &
I for a visit to Maplewood Farm on Wednesday. It is a small park
in North Vancouver that caters to the under 6 year old crowd and has
barnyard animals to see up close as well as a few animals that enjoy
being petted.
This was Ryan’s first visit to the farm as the rest of us had taken
Kyra while he was on tour last year. Kyra was happy to run bundled up
in her snowsuit like the Pillsbury doughboy. The stroller was just used
for the transport of purses.
We saw the ugliest creature ever, a potbellied pig with 3 large teeth
sticking out of his bottom jaw. He knew how to enjoy life though as he
was lying in a huge pile of straw in the stable, with a heat lamp
directly over him while his poor buddy was standing outside shivering.
The inside pig was happy to eat all the lettuce we wanted to feed him.
Kyra really likes all the birds including the chickens, ducks, geese
and some exotic parrots and cockatoos. It helps that they all liked the
$3.00 bag of birdseed she carried around.
The miniature goats were a huge hit with Doug & Ryan. These goats
all wanted as much attention as they could get and would have climbed
into Doug’s lap if he had let them. Kyra also liked the miniature
donkey as she could get close enough to hug it and she got to pull out
grass in the paddock that she joyfully threw over her head. What a good
way to spend and hour and a half.
Grandma Sue
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
“Oh, the weather outside is frightful and the fire is so delightful and
since we’ve no place to go, let it snow let it snow let it snow!”
Whoever wrote those words must have lived in Southern Ontario! I know
we’re not alone with the huge snow banks lining our street but it’s
been quite a few years since we’ve had an accumulation like we’re
having this year. This winter is definitely a throwback to when we were
kids in the 50’s and 60’s and I for one am glad as heck that I no
longer have to make my way to school or work in this winter wonderland!
I’m sure there were no by-laws forcing people to clear the snow off
their sidewalks back when I was a kid because I don’t remember a single
clear walkway as we trudged our way to and from school in Kitchener’s
North Ward. I remember having to spend my time after school and up to
supper with both a shovel and an ice chopper that my dad had made out
of a piece of pipe and a flat of steel trying to clear the snow that
had built up on top of the ice on our sidewalk. Then once the snow was
too hard to shovel, it was chop, chop, chop and scrape, scrape, scrape
to make the sidewalk passable for pedestrians. I don’t ever remember
having succeeded in clearing the walkway right down to the concrete.
Usually we would succeed in clearing the snow and there would still be
about 3” of hard snow and ice that passed as our sidewalk. Our street,
“Floyd St” was and still is a narrow one block long street that
stretched between Fairfield Ave and Guelph St with an open field called
Breithaupt Park at the north end and this made for incredibly windy and
snowy conditions on our street. We always had the winter winds howling
down our street and there were many days when we sat on the couch by
the living room window and watched as the white blanket of snow blew
horizontally past our house blocking out the view of the houses across
the street. We never seemed to have snow that came strait down like you
see in the movies! The street was so narrow that when the plough did
manage to find it’s way down our street it left only one lane of room
and the cars could barely make it past each other when traveling in
opposite directions. If someone left their car on the street because
they hadn’t cleared the entrance to their drive, nobody could get by
them! You had to approach your house from the end of the street that
was open to your house until that person moved their car onto their own
driveway.
I remember being out with my dad shoveling for an hour just to get rid
of the huge pile that the plough had left in our drive entrance. To top
it all of, our driveway ramp was steep and only about 3’ long since the
street was real low compared to the frontages of the lots on the
street. The boulevards were only about 3’ wide as well and this made
for very little space to pile the snow on when we shoveled. By the time
we were half way into the winter, the roadway was so narrow that it
truly was only a single lane. I remember my dad ramming his way out of
the driveway in the morning with our “54 Buick Special because he
didn’t have time to shovel the ramp before going to work. By the time
he’d come home from work most days, the city plough would have filled
in the ramp once again and it was either take a run at the drive with
the Buick or stop in the middle of the road and get out the shovels! I
don’t think there was such a thing as a snow blower back in those days
especially one that the individual homeowner could own and use. If
there was, you had to have a lot more money than my folks had to own
one, that’s for sure! I guess in that respect, we are real lucky
nowadays to have access to and enough money to own a snow blower. I’d
say it’s one of the late 20th century’s best inventions! I sure have
appreciated my TORO so far this winter and by the sounds of tonight’s
weather report, I’ll need it many more weeks to come! I remember
absolutely hating to have to shovel the snow when we were kids but I
actually enjoy clearing the snow with the use of my blower now that I’m
clearing it from my own driveway rather than being ordered to clear it
from my folk’s driveway. Of course, if my dad had owned a TORO back in
those days’ things might have been different too! The snow blower would
likely have been just one more reason for my brother and me to fight
like two Pit bulls over a bone! LOL!
Oh well, at least with all this snow piling up and more to come, we
shouldn’t have a shortage of ground water this coming spring and
summer! Let’s see the city try to stop me from washing my Jeep in the
driveway this summer!
That’s it for now folks, I have to go out and blow the snow once more
before heading off to bed! Or, maybe I’ll just sit by the fire with a
mug o’ hot chocolate and do the blowing in the morning!
That is all for this week!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
When you’re out shoveling or blowing your snow, take time to find the
nearest hydrant to your house and clear the snow from around it! You
never know when the Fire Department might need it to save your lives
and home!
PPS: Do any of you folks around my age remember EVER having a “Snow
Day” when we were in school? Most certainly not one that was declared
by the School Board but if we missed school because of the snow, it was
declared by Mother Nature, NOT by the authorities. You got your winter
gear on and got the hell out in the storms and made it to school or
else!!!
****
Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.
|